Dan 'Dance' Malesela has warned the South African Football Association and the Premier Soccer League against rushing to adopt a new rule that is being proposed by the Confederation of African Football.
Apparently, from the 2024/25 season, PSL clubs are expected to comply with the CAF licensing rule which forbids unqualified coaches from being employed by clubs.
This means head coaches without the CAF A license and assistant coaches who are without the CAF B license might not be able to coach in the Premiership next season.
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Malesela says this new rule will leave many local coaches unemployed and families starving.
"You indeed have to get an an education and stuff like that, but there are people who got educated but they were never credited," Malesela tells KickOff.
"People like myself, we were never credited for whatever we did, and then we are told that whatever we did in terms of courses, it's actually either equivalent to CAF A or above CAF A. That's if you've done your SAFA Level 2.
"But at the same time, if you are going to want to demand these things, then you must make these courses available and give preference to those people who have been there before. There are people who got their licenses through the same SAFA courses that we did. But then why do you discriminate, and why don't you credit everybody who has done SAFA Level 2, Level 3, and whatever?" he added.
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"There’s a labour ruling about experience, where you need to be credited through your experience. There are people who get honoured through ownership of the work they've been doing all these years. It's right to study and all these things, but then credit people where credit it's due. How many years I've been coaching now? What is there in coaching that I wouldn't know? What is there that I wouldn't be able to teach people?
"I'm probably at the level of teaching people how to go about at the level of coaching. But we just need to be careful when we do these things and not just get excited and say next year we require this and that. Give people time to study, give people time to go through these things. People cannot sit at home unemployed just because someone out there has got this ruling.
"By doing that you are indirectly saying clubs must import coaches. What about the local people you must feed first? So make those courses available, affordable and reasonable because people don't have money to pay. Make these courses available and give them terms so that they can afford.
"I mean somebody told me to go and do CAF C licence... I mean, is that respectful to me? What about all these times I've been coaching? People would not come to my games if I was unable to coach. We must be careful when we introduce such things, we mustn't just accept anything that we are told.
"We must tell CAF to give us some time so that we can get our people qualified."
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